BLOG

Content marketing is a tactic no marketer can ignore in today’s day. No matter what the size of your business is, if you are in business, you need Content Marketing to reach your customers. So now the question is not whether you should incorporate content marketing as a part of your marketing strategy, but rather, how you can build and execute a successful one.

Like any strategy Content marketing too requires investment and commitment and for a small business with limited resource, that can mean risk. But show us a successful entrepreneur who has not indulged in risk taking. If approached in the right manner, Content marketing can help you get -more than you ever asked for.

We list out for you here our Top 5 strategies that can help a small business gain momentum and save up money.

1) Make a budget: Before embarking on any further, it’s important to make a budget. How much are you willing to or can afford to partake on this both monetarily and commitment wise. Evaluate the time & commitment your employees can give, shortlist the good writers and artist if you have and get going.

2) Do your research: Get onto the social media sites and analyze what your competitors or people in your industry are doing. This will also give you an idea for the time and investment you will need to make. Go to Google analytics and Webmaster tools to check out the web pages with most traffic and look for content and keywords that has been performing well. Understanding these trends will give you an edge as you embark into the content marketing world.

3) Create a strategy: Just like any other marketing plan, content marketing too requires a detailed strategy, defined goals and target audiences. You need to determine your audience demographics since the content you will churn out will heavily depend on that. Choose the platforms you think would suit your business and where your customers are most engaged. Also create a schedule for content pieces you intend to develop over next 2-3 months.

4) Utilize the visual boom: We have said this enough already- this year belongs to visual content marketing. Infographics, GIFs, images will give your content a twist and higher engagement rate on the social media. So even if you are a small business, creating images, GIFs, Infographics is really simple and easy since there are a vast number of tools you can use for free.

5) Track your progress: Once you set sail, make sure you track your progress. This will help you refine, define and organize your content strategy even better. Tools like Google analytics, Alexa will help you determine how your website is progressing. On the social media, FB analytics, Twitter analytics will help you figure out what you are doing right or wrong. Keep a tab on these and adjust your sails accordingly.

While these are just the basics to help get started, we have some favorite content marketing hacks which we would like to share and the best part is they fit into any budget.

-Turn your Powerpoint Presentations to Slideshare posts and embed it onto a blog post and share
-Turn your notes, PPTs into articles/blog posts
-Create a list of FAQs and share on Quora and your company blog
-Create a list of facts to support your business’ USP
-Pick out interesting quotes from your blogs and share as images
-Pick out brand keywords and use it consistently in all your posts

Customer facing staff is a great resource in terms of feedback. Identify your TA’s biggest queries and turn them into a Q&A format.

So there you are. Content marketing is for all those who want to grow and lead in their businesses irrespective of their sizes. It can help you garner a loyal customer base and for any business that is the greatest ROI.